Commodities take center stage

The price of wheat futures spiked to their highest levels in two years earlier this month and prices for raw coffee beans began to rise last month, moving the restaurant industry’s commodity environment to center stage.

Commodity pricing has been mostly beneficial for restaurants for the past year and a half, especially compared with the soaring prices experienced in 2008, when profit margins were hit hard from inflated costs just as industry sales started to decline. In 2009, an